


Happy Ending

by anzu_brief



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Happy Ending, M/M, Post Movie, X-Men: Dark Phoenix (Movie) Spoilers, it's canon, it's canon guys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-09
Updated: 2019-06-09
Packaged: 2020-04-23 05:13:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19144267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anzu_brief/pseuds/anzu_brief
Summary: Charles knows how all this ended before, and a part of him is frightened that it will end up in the same disastrous way. He knows that the demons that hunt him today are as real and dangerous as the ones which hunted Erik in the past. But Erik is here; he made the effort to track him down and now he is inviting Charles into his home… and unlike Erik all those years ago, and to his own surprise, Charles discovers that he is ready to accept the help that is offered.(Perhaps, despite all the pain they have been through, despite the terrible losses and mutual betrayals, their story can have a happy ending.)





	Happy Ending

**Author's Note:**

> Do I need to say it? SPOILERS!!! If you haven't watched the movie, what are you waiting for? Go and watch it and then come back! Alternately, if you are not planning to watch it and want to read it anyway, you are very welcome, but do so under your own responsibility.

Charles is almost sixty five years old. He is very much aware of that age. He feels the weight of each year on his shoulders, weighing him down — even if the face that looks back at him from the mirror belongs to a man twenty years his junior. Some of the scars he has suffered are visible: his missing hair, his useless legs. The old vanity that left alongside them, the idealism, the hopeful optimism that was buried under heavy loss and  bitterness far too many years ago, those scars cannot be seen, they cannot be measured, but Charles mourns for them almost as much as as he does for his legs.

Charles has lost much; far more than the average person, and through it all he has pulled through. He isn’t the man that he was forty years ago - young and hopeful and oh, so in love - but he is still human and still hopeful; he held into his compassion and fought back when the cruelty of life (and men) threatened to erode his humanity.

This has always been a source of pride for him, even though he would never dare to voice it aloud (he refuses to give his sister one more reason to rant about his ego). But in his heart of hearts, Charles has always thought of himself as the stronger man of the two. In his heart of hearts, through all the years he and Erik have known each other, Charles has never stopped feeling compassion towards Erik, but he has never stopped judging him either, secure in his knowledge that in the same cruel, unfortunate circumstances, Charles would have reacted differently - he would have reacted _better_.

Today that belief has been shattered.

Yesterday Charles buried a sister…

Today he is burying his daughter.

* * *

 

Almost thirty eight years ago, when the doctors told him that he would never be able to sire children due to his disability, he barely paid any mind. Children had always being a very abstract concept, a blurry concern for the future. Compared to the loss of his legs, his sister, and the future he had begun to visualize (along with his broken heart), the impossibility to have children of his own seemed… inconsequential at the time. He never changed his mind, either. There were times when the idea crossed his mind, but the school kept him busy and the impossibility of having a child of his own never bothered him particularly.

Jean changed that.

Jean wasn’t his daughter -- no biologically, at least. And she was never supposed to be anything more than a student under his care, regardless of how gifted she was. Of course, there were many things in Charles’ life that weren’t supposed to be. The bullet that Moira shot and Erik deflected wasn’t supposed to crash his spinal artery. America was never supposed to go to war with Vietnam and Charles’ students were not supposed to be drafted and killed in action - but the they did and it happened. Likewise, Jean was never supposed to become his daughter, except that she did and she was -- in all but name.

Charles had fallen in love with the traumatized little girl he invited into his home and he didn’t notice it happening until it was already too late to stop it. Jean was girl full of grief and sorrow, a girl who had lost her entire family due to powers beyond her control... and yet, when the chance came, she chose to put her full trust on him and accept him like no one had before. Charles welcomed her into his home and in return she welcomed him into her head, and, soon after, she ended up carving her way into his heart.

Jean had been seven years old when Charles met her. He raised her up. He cleaned her cuts when she fell from the trees she liked to climb, he wiped away her tears when the nightmares kept her away at night, he was her confident, her counselor, her guide. He was her father in all the ways that counted and no father had ever been prouder of their child.

* * *

 

Today Jean is dead. There is a gap in Charles’ mind where she should be; where she was, a few mere hours ago. Now there is only emptiness in her place.

In his heart of hearts, Charles has always judged Erik for how he handled the hand that he was given. Today, Charles begins to question if he would have reacted any different in Erik’s place. Today Charles has buried her daughter and the pain he feels is different, sharper and crueler, than any pain he has experienced before. Today Charles wishes that someone physical had killed her, that the United States Government or the Humans had killed her. He wishes that he could blame someone for her death, someone _alive_ , so that he could take his revenge, so that he could avenge her and make _them_ pay.

It would not bring her back, but surely it would make him feel something other than what he is feeling now. Now, Charles feels nothing - he feels as if someone has taken his heart and pulled it out of his chest, leaving behind nothing but sorrow. He feels cold and numb and even keeping his eyes open is too much of an effort. He wishes he didn’t have to bother. He wishes he could close them forever. He can’t. Jean wouldn’t like that. Jean doesn’t - didn’t - doesn’t deserve that.

Losing Raven four days ago was terrible, but it didn't feel like this. It hurt, of course. He felt a terrible pain. His sister has been his dearest companion throughout his life and he is so proud of the woman she became despite of him -- he is prouder than she ever believed. Losing her was like losing the last parts of the child he once was; the last bits of his innocence. He mourned her because she was too young and to full of live and because she was taken too soon and she had so many things yet to do and it just wasn't fair. Given the choice, Charles would give his life to bring her back in a second, without a moment of a doubt. But Raven was dead and Charles was not and it never occurred to him to give up after she died. Life went on.

Losing Erik… Losing Erik had been different. To begin with, Erik hadn’t really died. Charles had first lost Erik to betrayal, to opposite aims and irreconcilable worldviews. He lost him many times after that. The first time hurt like a bitch. It took Charles years to rebuild the pieces of his shattered heart and the end result was never quite as goo as the original. The times after that... it still hurt, but pain is never quite so bad when it was expected. Charles has never allowed himself to dream of a future together again. He has never trusted him fully again, and with good reason.

Jean wasn’t his sister. Charles and Raven had raised each other - Charles raised Jean. Jean wasn't Erik. Her mind didn’t sing to Charles the way Erik’s did, it lacked Erick’s enticing appeal and dangerous allure - hers was vast, tender and full of warmth. From the moment they had met, Erik’s mind called to Charles like siren call - eventually, at some point throughout the years they spent together, Jean’s mind became home.

But today Jean is dead. Charles has put her body ten feet below ground and he has no one to blame but himself and nothing makes sense anymore. So Charles decides to leave, because he has no other choice. He tells Hank and Hanks tries to argue against it but Charles can tell his arguments are only halfhearted. Then he tells his oldest students, his second class, and that is harder, but they, too, let him go. They are all grown up now and they have grown up wiser and humbler than Charles can ever hoped to be so he doesn’t lie when he tells them that he has nothing left to teach, but he doesn’t say that he has to go, that he can’t stay, no now that Jean is no longer here -- perhaps they can hear the unspoken words anyway.

Charles leaves. He boards a plane and leaves for England, to the country where he spent the first, lonely years of his childhood, and the much happier ones of his youth. But the ghost of Raven follows him everywhere he goes, so he leaves again. He boards another plane and doesn’t much care where it takes him.

First Berlin. Next Barcelona. Then Paris.

Charles is self aware enough to understand that what he is doing, isolating himself, is not healthy -- but he can’t stop himself. Everywhere he goes, his ghosts seem to follow him. He sees a girl playing around in the swings, a young couple laughing at the pub, a happy family walking in the park and Charles minds screams: Jean! Jean! Jean! Jean paid the price to give them a chance at a happy life, Jean bought all of their happiness with her life, and the price was too high to be paid, and Charles wants to shout at them, he wants to blame them and he wants to burn them and he wants to make them understand what they led her to do -- what they led him to do, to put her child at danger for the sake of an acceptance that should have been given freely. Only, he can’t. He can't, and he is tired… so, so tired.

There is nothing left of the man he once was: cheerful, hopefully optimistic, a little vain and oh, so in love.

Charles is drinking a cup of tea in his usual spot in Paris. It’s early in the morning yet, so he resists the urge to ask the waitress for a short of whisky. He is a recovered alcoholic, or was, seeing as he is gone back to drinking a bottle of whisky or two a day, but he refuses to drink before the afternoon - that’s the one rule he didn’t cross before, and he refuses to cross it now. (Sometimes Charles wonders how long his resolve is going to last, or why does he care at all).

Charles is sitting in his usual spot not thinking about anything in particular - or, he is trying hard not to thinking about that shot of whisky that he is not going to order -, when he feels it. He is convinced that he is imagining it at first, for he can’t think of any conceivable reason that would bring him here. Surely he is imagining.

(Charles stopped imagining Erik coming back to him many, many years ago. Sporadic dreams don’t count. No even a telepath can control his own dreams at all times.)

Only, the presence doesn’t fade away; instead, it grows stronger as it approaches him. Charles' mind surrenders to the inevitable truth: Erik is here. Erik must want something from him. He will be bitterly be disappointed, then - Charles thinks cynically -, after having his minions track him down and coming all the way to talk to him in person. No matter what Erik needs, Charles will be of no use to him or to anybody else in the present circumstances.

Charles discreetly retreats from Erik’s mind but he has not let himself in deep enough to figure out what has bought his oldest living friend here. Charles has never ventured that far in Erik’s mind, no since that fateful day in the Cuban beach, and, most certainly, he never will again. No unlike Odysseus, the Greek King who sealed his sailors’ ears with wax to prevent them from becoming willing victims of the sirens’ call, Charles has kept a veil of distance between his and Erik’s mind, safe in the knowledge that if Erik ever tries to drag him into the ocean to be engulfed by its waters, at least Charles will be able to put up a fight, instead of following him willingly to his end.

Thus, Charles is not surprised when Erik approaches him and takes a seat at his table, without asking first if he is welcomed. Erik does as he wishes and pays no mind to customs and manners -- it was one of his most alluring qualities, back when they met thirty nine years ago. Now, Charles finds himself reacting quite indifferently to such display of arrogance and self-assuredness. Of course, nowadays, Charles rarely cares about most things.

Charles is surprised, however, when Erik sets up the portable chessboard in their table. It’s been decades since the last time they played a game against each other. Charles can’t recall the precise moment. Of course, it has even longer - much, much longer - since the day a chess match had been offered as an invitation for something else, something far more intimate, in a old motel room with crumbling walls and dirty mattresses, surrounding by cornfields in the middle of Kansas. The mutant they had tracked down to the area ended up chasing them out of his property at gunpoint and the three-week car journey was wasted, but neither of them had particularly cared at the time. (They had been to busy learning to know each other physically and falling in love along the way).

The memory makes Charles uncomfortable. He usually avoids thinking about those short, far away months that he and Erik spent traveling the country (or, if he can’t help himself, he usually waits until he is wasted so that he can blame the alcohol the next morning and pretend it never happened). The memory makes him uncomfortable so he aims to make Erikd uncomfortable too. “What are you doing here?” He asks, and  the tone of his voice leaves little doubt that Erik's presence is neither expected not welcomed.

Erik’s blood is thicker than that. He isn’t bothered by Charles's cold reception and instead he smiles pleasantly. It’s an uncommon sight, and it brings back vivid memories. Charles had only seen Erik smile in the same manner a few times before, and in every occasion Erik had been asleep, laying naked in bed next to an equally naked Charles. To see the same expression now, when Erik is awake… It touches something inside of Charles. It makes him pay closer attention.

It’s not just his smile, Charles realizes after a moment. His shoulders are relaxed as well; his body no longer in continuous tension, no longer waiting for the next attack. Erik’s face is not as youthful as it once was; he has bags under his eyes and wrinkles in the corners of his eyes, and yet… and yet, his expression is soft when he smiles at Charles and he looks at peace. This is the man Charles knew Erik could become one day. The man Erik turned away from, when he refused to put his demons to rest.

It should be a bitter realization. Here it is the proof that Charles was right all along, that Erik had this potential inside of him (the potential to be a good man), but Charles wasn’t enough. Someone else has brought Erik here. Someone else has made him see what Charles could see all along. It should be a bitter realization, but it is not.

For the first time since Jean--

For the first time--

For the first time, Charles feels something akin to hope, even if he himself cannot understand the source of such feeling.

Once upon a time, Charles met a tortured young man; a broken man who was but the shell of the person that he was born to be; a man whose mind called to him like no other; a breathing contradiction. A man full of anger and bitterness who woke him up with kisses in the mornings and cooked dinner for him in the afternoons and played chess with him well into the night. He was the first person Charles had even been in love with. They had met, and Charles had fallen for him fast and hard. In just a few months they had spent together, Charles became ready to share everything with him, to build a life together. The young man had demons, but in his arrogance, Charles had been sure that he could save him, that they could beat the those demons together. Only Charles' help hadn't been enough and he had failed in this endeavor (or perhaps the young man hadn't been ready to accept anyone's help yet). Charles had lost everything.

Now, Charles is a bitter old man trying to escape from his demons. He is a man far too familiar with pain and grief and loss. Throughout the years, he has buried nine students, his little sister and his only child. He has been betrayed by the love of his life, and in return, he has betrayed him and others. Now, Charles is alone (or was) sitting in a Parisian café, but he remembers the days when his lover woke him up with kisses in the morning, cooked him dinner in the afternoons and played chess with him well into the night.

Of course, Charles knows how all this ended before, and a part of him is frightened that it will end up in the same disastrous way. He knows that the demons that hunt him today are as real and dangerous as the ones that hunted Erik in the past. But Erik is here, today. He made the effort to track him down and and now he is inviting Charles into his home… and unlike Erik all those years ago, and to his own surprise, Charles discovers that he is ready to accept the help that is offered.

(Perhaps, despite all the pain they have been through, despite the terrible losses and mutual betrayals, their story can have a happy ending.)

And so it happens. Erik opens his left hand to reveal a white pawn and it's Charles' move now. He has a choice to make. In his heart of hearts, for the first time in several weeks, Charles feels something akin to hope.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I am happier than I can tell. My heart has been crushed so many times... Sasuke and Naruto (epilogue!), Spock and Kirk (reboot SpockUhura!), Steve and Bucky (Endgame, not even a fucking goodbye!!!!). But Charles and Erik were my OTP before I knew what an OTP was, and yes, ladies and gentlemen, they are officially canon!! Don't try to tell me they aren't! My dad is not very open minded and even he noticed that the ending they have given them is the same Batman and Cat Woman get at the end of TDKR. He was confused about it, HAHAHAHA! And didn't like it when I explained it to him like I would do to a toddler, but he couldn't deny it because it's fucking canon!
> 
> Sorry about the craziness. The story is unbeta. I left the cinema this evening, I got home and started writing. It's now 3am and I am going to sleep. I am sure there are many mistakes that I'll try to find and fix tomorrow, because I am too tired to do it right now. Even so, I hope you enjoyed and let me know your thoughts, please. It's canon!!!! Yeih!!!


End file.
